Hello, Starmourners!
It’s another month – March, to be precise. We hope you’ve enjoyed all the shipchanges we’ve all been working on! Don’t forget to give Damiel and Zersiax a whole lot of love for all their hard work, testing, and research. The new Storytellers are also busy – you might have been noticing a few little quests popping up here and there. And of course, we have all been absolutely in love with Selubir.
We’ve been setting new records for missiles fired in Mission Control, by the way. Seriously, did you know that in the past two weeks you’ve shot the grid almost twice as many times as you did for the entire month of January?
What’s on the horizon for THIS month, you ask? Well, Mission Control is going away for a bit, but as the subject of this announcement has probably clued you in – we now have tesseracts available! Gather your friends and share the love!! If you’re unfamiliar with tesseracts, check out HELP TESSERACTS for all the details, and be sure to go stock up on some on our website – they’re under Artifact Packages.
We have new prizes available in the tesseracts, and they are the following things:
– A RoamTek experimental exploration matrix – This HIGHLY unstable teleportation device is perfect for flinging yourself (or your allies) across the known galaxy at a moment’s notice. RoamTek takes no responsibility for any loss of life, limb, or sanity that occurs while using the device, but does promise that they’ve worked out the bug that lands you in the middle of a star. Mostly. Probably. Recharges every 12 hours. Not usable in arenas.
– A shipboard drinkery – Curate and serve a custom menu of beverages onboard your vessel with the help of your new cheerful robotic companion, permanently installed in this new ship room.
– A small diamond-backed scorptail – Annoy your enemies and amaze your friends with the control you have over this highly venomous, miniature scorptail pet. One of the galaxy’s most savage predators, rendered benign (to you. mostly.) by a cybernetic implant. Genetic engineering has made this little guy the size of a feracht rather than a broncayo, making it a lot less deadly when it decides to sit on your shoulder.
– Two new issues of StarStruck magazine – the Pop Stars edition and the Punk Icons edition. Try on the dazzling rainbowfied look of the Pop Stars genekit, or get gritty with the sharp-edged style of a Biopunk icon.
Also available are:
-a portable RoamTek Trophymaker
-an understated leesa dispenser
-the Galactic Starship Trend Tracker
-a stasis field
-a transponder registration chip
-a pair of eight-sided fortuity dice
And the usual random minipets, credits, lessons, mildly interesting things, and so much more!
Artifacts available in this month’s tesseracts are as follows:
smartcore_stylist
display_permit
distortion_field
factiondeathsight
hardened_surveyor
ship_enemy_detector
ship_cargo_recover
sector_scanner
Good luck, Starmourners. I hope you find a lot of gold at the end of your
rainbows this March!
p.s. We have something fun and new coming in a couple weeks, so stay tuned!!
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Been a minute since we updated the website, so here’s what we’ve been up to lately, Starmourners!
Selubir Expands!
The incredibly hard work and artistry of Damiel and Soren is revealed in their biggest, most lovingly detailed project yet. The planet Selubir, a dusty, orange-colored human colony known most famously as the homeworld of Cassandra Min, has been expanded in a massive way to be more friendly to newbies and veterans alike. Full of lore, quests, and new creatures, you’ll have to visit it to learn all its secrets, but check out Announcement 190 for a sneak peak at all the details. This project has been a labor of love, and it shows in every line, so be sure to check it out!
New Storytellers!
Give a warm, warm welcome to Argus, Nicnevin, and Neritus, Starmourn’s newest and shiniest Storytellers. They’ve been working hard to get up to speed on the game’s current systems and complete their training tasks – it won’t be long now before they start in on projects of their own!
Luxury Superstructures!
New superstructures are available from Serenity Forgeworks and Vertix Luxury Systems. They are expensive, but their stats have been significantly boosted. Check them out at shipforges across the sector today! New shipsims and new capacitors have also been added for some ship classes. Check out announcement 183 and update 429 for more.
Affliction Changes
Last but not least, Senzei and Zersiax have been working hard too! Thanks to the feedback of the player base, we’ve been slowly working at refining the game’s afflictions. The ‘mind’ and ‘muscular’ affliction categories have recently received some love. Read announcements 187 and 188 to get the details!
That’ll do it for now, spacers. See you in the stars!
The Starmourn team currently has an opening for a new Storyteller – possibly two if we get some really good applicants – and we are looking for someone or someones with enthusiasm and passion to shape the future of everyone’s favorite space mud!
Storytellers are meant, first and foremost, to drive player stories in an individual faction and take the lead on its creative direction. While we do have rules and restrictions for our volunteer staff, we have perks as well! Storytellers have a lot of creative freedom within those rules, and are able to shape the direction of the game for themselves and players under their jurisdiction – with guidance from Senior Staff!
If you have good communication skills, the ability to finish what you start, and think you’re up for being an active member of our volunteers, please consider sending in an application to eukelade@starmourn.com with answers to the following questions.
1. Why do you want to be a Storyteller?
2. How much time do you think you will be able to contribute to the game in a normal week?
3. What do you think you will bring to the game?
4. What are your expectations for being a Storyteller?
5. What three things would you change about Starmourn?
6. How would you describe yourself in online interactions?
7. What’s your mud experience like?
8. What do you think your most valuable contribution to Starmourn has been, thus far?
9. What’s your favorite feature of Starmourn, and why?
Looking forward to hearing from you! You have until 11:59pm on Monday, February 1st, to apply.
In our last post, we reviewed the major changes and highlights that happened over the course of 2020. (A lot of things!)
In this post, we’ll offer a teaser of what we hope to get to in the coming year!
In 2021, balancing and enhancing combat (especially pvp combat) will remain a huge and ongoing goal, with Senzei continuing to serve as the player/staff Liaison on all combat-related matters, and Zersiax working hard to finish classleads. We will take a look at arenas, adding more of them, more ways to use them, as well as more games, functionality and rewards. Cosmpiercers will also continue to receive tweaks.
Game growth will be a focus for both players and staff. Clarification to the volunteer contract, additional structure, and more documentation for our team will make contributing to Starmourn more rewarding. (By the way, the Starmourn team will be looking for new help very soon!)
On the player side, we want to maintain a continued stream of new players (which is why Challenge 75 is running until the end of January!) to keep our community growing. We’ll implement a new way to learn about and choose your faction in chargen. As well, we want there to be a clear path towards organization permanence, and will soon be implementing a “staff sponsorship” system so you know what you need to do and how much effort it will take to cement your place in the galaxy forever (beyond just using a mildly interesting thing to promote your dynasty or clan – we’re talking custom quests, clan halls, org-affiliated npcs – well, just wait and see!)
In Starmourn, roleplay will always be a focus, so on the roleplay front, we want to keep spinning plotlines for everyone, maintaining our pace of 3-4 “big” events per year (and countless little ones). We will also continue giving players the support they need to make their own stories feel real and immersive, and continually update the code to support a roleplay-driven game. This includes things like new roleplay-centric commands, new tradeskills, multi-page datashards, and more.
Please note that this post is neither definitive nor final – we want to get to all of this stuff (and even more!), but if a better idea or a more pressing need springs up, we may change gears to focus on that. Know that we are always working hard for you, the player, to make Starmourn more fun – that’s the most important goal of all!
Happy New Year, everyone!
Enough has been said about how hard 2020 was for everyone – so instead, as is an Iron Realms tradition, let’s take some time to look back at the highlights of 2020! The things that made this year more bearable and fun for our growing Starmourn community.
January – Classleads
In January of 2020, we opened Classleads, taking a hard look – with your help! – at the B.E.A.S.T., the Nanoseer, and the Fury. These classes saw a major rework, shaking up the pvp game in a big way. We also released one of what would become the most popular games in Starmourn – Mission Control, an exciting gameshow hosted by esteemed entertainer Snap Mezyahti.
Feburary – Daily Credits
In February we brought Starmourn into the 21st century of gaming (sort of…I mean, we’re still a MUD after all!) by offering Daily Credits, letting players earn up to 20 bound credits a day. Daily Credits are a great system if you want access to the game’s fancy artifacts and interesting promotional content but can’t afford, or just don’t want, to pay cash.
March – The Xenohunt & Talents
In March, while the world retreated indoors, we revealed Talents, allowing players to extend their journey beyond level 75 and keep building their character and earning XP indefinitely. We also introduced the insidious Fantom Laboratories with their strange, unexplained access to Aleph and Betarch level monsters. Our first weekend-long Xenohunt also took place in March, which was a highly anticipated and well attended event.
April – Station Missions
In late April of 2020, we launched Station Missions, an awesome system to add more content and tasks for the intrepid starship captain. With Station Missions, players found work across the galaxy, ferrying passengers from place to place, dodging or completing mercenary contracts, and using their access to commodities and goods to keep stations in good repair.
May 2020 – Covid Heroes Fundraiser
In May, Iron Realms launched the Helping Covid Heroes fundraiser, and the collective generosity of the Iron Realms playerbase managed to relieve a whopping $1.5 dollars in medical debt. Also in May, we saw the advent of the game’s first Rainbow Parties, a tradition that has soon become one of the Starmourn playerbase’s favorite ways to share fun promotional content with their pals.
June – Discord Goes Official
In June, we took another big step into modern gaming, putting an OFFICIAL stamp on our community discord with the help of our peerless moderator. Have you joined the conversation over there yet? Why not? The memes are off the hook, get on it!
July – Staff Shakeup!
In July, we said goodbye to Ilyos, our old Producer, and began the hunt for a new coder, while Eukelade took the reigns as the new boss. A few weeks after we started our search, we welcomed Zersiax to the team as our new lead coder.
August and September – Time Crisis!
In August, we kicked off a months-long plotline centered around a rift in space and time that threw the whole galaxy into chaos. Anomalies, cursed prisms (that everyone tried to lick…c’mon guys), bizarre science experiments, lost explorers, newly explorable planets, and time-wrecked spaceships were just some of the amazing things the players of Starmourn experienced. In the end, after an intense battle, reality itself was changed, altering time in Starmourn permanently. While this was all going on, our new lead coder Zersiax opened Classleads – and at the conclusion of our event was another Xenohunt.
October – Scare the Storytellers!
In October, we welcomed Senzei, a new coding volunteer, to the team. We also rolled out a major design update courtesy of Damiel, adding almost two hundred new patterns to the design database and completely restructuring the base cost, making tradeskills more affordable than ever. In addition to that, we made some preliminary changes to our bounty system. Towards the end of the month, our first annual Scare the Storytellers contest resulted in a chilling winning entry by Kass Stareater, now located at the new player submissions page.
November – Challenge 75
November started off with a huge bonus to players – Challenge 75, a brand new initiative to encourage player retention and character creation – and it worked. With 750 credits as a motivator, the game is busier than ever, with new players joining all the time, hoping to win the prize! Challenge 75 is still going on, too, and will until the end of January. Tell your friends!
December – Winterflame!
Everyone’s favorite winter festival returned for its second consecutive year in Starmourn. Winterflame has been the name of the game all month, and players have once again thrown themselves into Akbaz care, marshmallow roasting, ice skating, and more. New to the festival is the brand new snowball fight arena, along with the puzzling addition of a mysterious fog and some void imps who seem determined to disrupt the festivities. We also said Happy Birthday, Starmourn, celebrating the game’s second year since launch on the 15th of the month. Here’s to many more!
Looking Forward
Last year had its challenges, to be sure, but I for one am extremely proud of everything Starmourn managed to accomplish, despite everything going on in the world. The new year will be a new opportunity for growth in Starmourn, and we’re excited to have you with us every step of the way. Stick around – we’ll be releasing some sneak peaks of what we’d like to accomplish in the coming year very soon!
Sparkle on, Starmourners. See you in space!
Hi, Starmourners!
Tomorrow, December 15th, Starmourn turns 2 years old. The best Sci Fi mud in the world has gone through a lot of changes in the past year. We created new areas like the Sabiak Teahouse, the Tosmar Wildlife Reserve, and the Gnomon Institute. We revamped Dynasties, launched Talents for a post-75 endgame experience, and created the daily credit system, all things that make it even easier to play Starmourn the way you want to play it. Players enjoyed event after event, from wars against the Ishvana to murders to music festivals (and sometimes all of those at once??) There was even an event that restructured time itself! We made our Discord official, welcomed new members to the team (hi, Zersiax, Senzei, Damiel, and Saio!), and you have all been very patient with me as I got my sea legs as the game’s lead Producer. Though it’s been a difficult year outside the game, inside it, we’ve been chugging right along, and we have no plans on stopping!
To thank you for sticking around, or to welcome you back if you’ve recently returned (it’s been so heartwarming to see old faces returning lately), or to welcome you for the first time if you’re new – we on the Starmourn Team would like to give every player of the game a little anniversary present. If you log on to the game in the next couple of days, you’ll receive a limited edition, interactive item and a free giftcatcher – no strings attached.
Thank you again, from all of us. Here’s to another year in space!
Eukelade
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